1. Field
Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communication systems, and more particularly to load balancing in wireless networks, such as EVDO, HSPA and LTE networks.
2. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may include a number of base stations that can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs) or Access Terminals (AT). The UEs or ATs may be dispersed throughout the network. Each base station may serve one or more UEs or ATs at any given moment. A UE or AT may communicate with a base station via the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base station to the UE or AT, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UE or AT to the base station.
A base station may transmit data and control information on the downlink to a UE or AT and/or may receive data and control information on the uplink from the UE or AT. On the downlink, a transmission from the base station may encounter interference due to transmissions from neighbor base stations or from other wireless radio frequency (RF) transmitters. On the uplink, a transmission from the UE or AT may encounter interference from uplink transmissions of other UEs or ATs communicating with the neighbor base stations or from other wireless RF transmitters. This interference may degrade performance on both the downlink and uplink.
Moreover, although heavily loaded sectors may have lightly loaded neighbors, current server selection solutions usually do not consider the load of neighbor cells. Rather, current solutions are based on purely downlink channel quality.
As the demand for mobile broadband access continues to increase, the possibilities of interference and congested networks grows with more UEs or ATs accessing the long-range wireless communication networks and more short-range wireless systems being deployed in communities. Research and development continue to advance the UMTS technologies not only to meet the growing demand for mobile broadband access, but to advance and enhance the user experience with mobile communications.